Introduction

Over 11 years ago, Penn State was dubbed by the Princeton Review as the “#1 Party School” in the country. Ignoring the fact that this poll used voluntary student responses to generate a biased ranking of undergraduate institutions, Penn State’s culture heavily revolves around drinking. That cannot be denied as around 75 percent of nearly 40,000 students at University Campus drink regularly.

In a podcast released in the same year by The American Life, Ira Glass and Sarah Koenig interviewed a variety of “Happy Valley” residents, from local residents to students to local business owners to even police officers. What they learned about State College was not very shocking, but their analysis of Penn State’s drinking culture contained ideologies and commonplaces worth further delving into.

Negative Ideologies and Commonplaces

In the Prologue of their podcast, Glass and Koenig portrayed the typical college students at Penn State in a largely negative way. They highlighted multiple incidents they witnessed: partiers who wouldn’t tone their noise level during the night, a girl peeing on someone’s lawn, and a guy carrying a stop sign he ripped out from the ground. Combining these experiences into one commonplace, the contributors of this podcast implied that all Penn State college students are lawless savages who share no concern for their neighbors or their property. The idea that the youth have no respect for their community or society as a whole definitely factors into how they depict college students at Penn State.

Act One of the podcast goes into further detail about the erratic behavior of drunk students. Koenig demeans a girl wearing a so-called “fracket” to cover herself. In this segment, the main commonplace in the first half is the idea that White college girls are ditzy and slutty when drunk based on their tight, short clothing. The stereotype that is being reinforced here is that young adult women who are drunk put themselves in a dangerous position to be taken advantage of by other college guys.

The Camaraderie of the Penn State Community 

Although the podcast emphasizes their negative attitude towards the drinking culture at Penn State, they do highlight some of the good aspects of the State College community at large. Take local stores like McLanahan’s: they provide anything a student could ever need or want (and I mean ANYTHING). Penn State’s drinking culture and football fanaticism benefits these local businesses as they usually sell out their inventory on gamedays. So while the commonplaces mentioned earlier point towards the dangers and recklessness of drinking culture, the example of McLanahan’s shows how the inner workings of capitalism, an economic ideology that advocates for a free market and private ownership of land and capital, support the small businesses of a college town.

Conclusion 

The irrational behavior of drunk stupids is an unfair commonplace that is applied to the Penn State student body as a whole. While the podcast repeatedly condemns Penn State’s drinking culture for its dangerous toxicity, there are some positives that cannot be overlooked such as the benefit to the local businesses of the State College community.